


birds fly in every direction

by luce_incanto



Category: Eurovision Song Contest RPF, Festival di Sanremo RPF, Italian music RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Character Study, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, M/M, Misunderstandings, as a way of life, but not really, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:45:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luce_incanto/pseuds/luce_incanto
Summary: Some things need to happen in their own time. Some people may surprise you, given the chance. Some thoughts lead you into a deadlock, but Ermal prefers to learn it the hard way.





	1. everything is temporary

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Italiano available: [birds fly in every direction [ITA]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21433024) by [innominecarbohydrates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innominecarbohydrates/pseuds/innominecarbohydrates)



_birds fly in every direction_

_i hope to see you again_

 

It’s obvious. Ermal knows all too well that their romance will be bright, and colorful, and short-lived, just like fireworks painting the sky with shining sparks, making it less dark and uncertain only for one glorious moment. Breathtaking. Heartbreaking.

Ermal doesn’t know himself so well, but that one thing he knows for sure – he isn’t the one to part ways easily. He clings to every single person, who carved a way into his heart, and he doesn’t let go.

He knows this will be painful, maybe even fatal. He sure likes lying to himself, but this time he approaches the mirror without any delusions clouding his eyes, only a sharp blade of truth. He touches the bags under his eyes, hiding in the twilight shadows, he doesn’t turn on the lights, he stares at himself and already feels this heart-wrenching pain, already sees himself restlessly writing one more tearful song about fading love.

Only his love never fades. It dies painfully, slowly, it withers in his soul without answering affection, it makes him smoke more, work more and hate himself a little bit more, because it’s surely only his fault if he can make someone fall in love with him, but cannot keep him in love for years to come. For _ever_ even if that sounds crazy. Forever, until whatever they decided to call _ever_ expires, but he’ll take that gladly instead of those two months they have.

Or maybe six. He doesn’t know Fabrizio that well to make accurate predictions.

He only knows that he makes compliments easily, he gives promises, he says all those wonderful things and smiles warmly, and at that very moment he feels them in his bones, believes in their unconditional truth. But then he moves on. Like a used lighter, waiting for someone else to recharge it, and he never looks back.

Fabri has this everlasting search for peace and although Ermal can quite well understand his need to move forward, he doesn’t know why he feels like he should never stop looking for something he can’t have. Because that’s what peace truly is – a moment, not an eternity. A touch, a ray of sunshine on the curtains in the morning, an ‘I love you’ whispered softly, a hand, caressing his curls lightly, gently. A smile shared between two people.

Fabrizio doesn’t see it like that. Ermal cannot understand this, but he has to accept.

He closes his eyes not to look in the mirror, not to look at himself, not to feel sorry for the way he falls in love with people he can’t keep.

Maybe it’s _because_ of it. Maybe he likes the pain of it, enjoys transforming it into music, using all his tears as a fuel for what will become the next and the next album, for what will be reborn into something beautiful. Maybe he’s more comfortable being miserable than happy.

Maybe. But he doesn’t really want to know, doesn’t want to psychoanalyze himself.

It is what it is. Fabrizio is a free bird and Ermal is the one always secretly wishing for a cage, and nothing’s going to change this simple equation.

It is what it is – a grey dawn in Sanremo, black branches crisscrossing the sky. The golden lion is sitting on the table, Fabri is in his bed, snoring softly, peacefully, like a child, and it's obvious which of the two prizes matters more. Ermal is walking across the room, soundless, seeking something in the brightening clouds above. Maybe some strength, maybe some hope for what he knows is a hopeless case, maybe something else to change his mind and make him see another future – the one where he’s wrong and Fabrizio can end his endless chase at any time. _Will_ end it for him, will smile and call him the light of his life again in a year, in two years. But he's not the one worth changing for, and he shouldn't open his heart to stupid dreams, allowing them cloud his judgement.  

Ermal sighs, full of longing for something he can have – a warm embrace, a sleepy kiss, a peace of mind. He can, but he choses to punish himself with pacing and thinking, punish himself for letting go too easily, too carelessly. He knew what kind of a man Fabrizio was from the very beginning, he saw that almost immediately in him – the short-lived excitement, quickly falling apart, reaping at seams as time passes and he finds himself a new center of attention. Heard it in his songs long before they met, and in his words when they discussed their failed romances once, after a bottle of whiskey. Felt it with his heart and steeled it not to let Fabri in. Smiled at him with caution, shrugged away his touches, answered with jokes on his most affectionate phrases, tried to keep away. Keep himself safe.

He still failed marvelously.

Ermal knows that now, tugging fingers through his tired, ruffled curls, and can only sigh again, defeated.

It was alcohol that brought all his defenses down with a crash, or maybe it wasn’t, maybe sober he’d still invite Fabri to his room only to kiss him against the door, only to surrender completely, tear down all his masks, and insecurities, and fears. To forget completely about his already fragile heart, too broken to be fixed again and again, to take one more risk and see how it plays out.

Ermal didn’t think he had this in himself, the courage to put everything on the line, risking both a wonderful friendship and his inner peace. But it was Fabri. How could he not?

It’s strange how he wishes exactly for the things he’s afraid of.

He knows it won’t last, but he dives right in and hopes to drown.

xxx

It’s morning and he wakes up from a gentle caress on his face. It’s the same grey light outside, but he manages to forget about it and feel sunshine on his skin as Fabri smiles at him slowly.

Ermal smiles back and then slides away, getting up to start the day. He doesn’t notice the way Fabrizio sighs at his hastiness, or if he does, he’s only glad. That’s the way it should be.

He doesn’t want it to end in two months and doesn’t want it to end with tears and curses, that’s why he needs to keep Fabrizio on his toes, to keep him _interested_ , to never give in completely. A solved riddle is only that, a milestone you pass by and sometimes remember fondly, with a hint of proudness. That’s why he needs to become unsolvable.

He needs to protect himself.

This is the reason Ermal almost throws Fabri out of his room this morning, panicking internally every time he opens his mouth to say something. He doesn’t want to hear a lecture about the importance of freedom, about the way he doesn’t want anything to hold him back from enjoying life in full and, most of all, he doesn’t want Fabri to know how much it upsets him. Doesn’t want him to see what he really wants in his eyes, too clear to hide something as grand as his affection.

What he really wants is to stay in this bed forever, to trade smiles for kisses and kisses for smiles, to forget about future heartbreak and let himself believe that everything is possible. That he’s worth loving and worth keeping. But Fabrizio doesn’t get to know the answers to his book all at once, he’ll have to leaf through it first, to wait for two/six months until he learns it by heart and throws it out.

Ermal doesn’t feel guilty for this even though Fabri does look a bit discouraged after his curt dismissal. They are not teenagers, they won’t hold hands and decide to try a relationship while living in different cities and being both public figures. The most Ermal can hope for is this undefined state in which he gets to kiss Fabri sometimes and to sleep together whenever they are in the same city, and that’s enough for him. Right?

Fabrizio doesn’t answer his calls for a week after this.

xxx

They still got interviews together, preparations for Eurovision to make, concerts and TV shows – one thousand little things that need their attention, and somehow Ermal manages to apologize without apologizing. They don’t talk about it – Fabrizio seems to understand that he shouldn’t, and Ermal feels a bit disappointed by his lack of insistence, but he knows whose fault it actually is, deep down.

He apologizes with his lips, his tongue, he finds a hundred inventive ways to make it up to Fabri, but he never says a word.

He’s afraid. He’s been afraid of many things in his life, and sometimes he thinks that fear is a permanent feature, that one demon he can never run away from. _You didn’t do anything to me_ he sings from the stage, and sometimes he even believes it, but then he steps back on the ground, feeling Fabrizio’s guiding hand on the small of his back, and reminds himself that there’ll be times when he’ll have to do this alone. As he always had his whole life. Yet now it suddenly feels like a tragedy.

They’ll be years and years ahead, but he wants this two/six months to last forever, as intense and wonderful as they are. Fabrizio changes everything for him, but does he change anything for Fabrizio?

Not very likely.

xxx

Ermal’s usual modus operandi is teasing people he likes to death, and he doesn’t see anything different in his interactions with Fabrizio at first. Except for the intense pleasure he feels every time the other man looks at him with a tired exasperated smile or slaps him playfully, or talks back, suddenly showing that he too has a very sharp tongue.

It’s hard to stay within boundaries when Ermal is so immersed in that game, when he uses every opportunity to think of new things to tease Fabri about. It’s hard not to forget that careless words can leave wounds sometimes, and that he isn’t very good at interpreting other people’s moods.

If his words do wound, he never notices. He never sees how Fabrizio becomes suddenly withdrawn sometimes, never understands that he, the most handsome man in the whole peninsula (if you ask Ermal), could actually be offended by a joke about not knowing what a hair comb is. His hair is wonderful in its wild freedom, anyone with eyes could tell that and Ermal never feels the need to repeat the obvious except for those few times words fly out of his mouth without filters.

What he wants to say with all this nonsense is _you’re so beautiful, Fabbri, I can’t risk writing sonnets about your mesmerizing face if I actually start gushing out compliments._

What he says is _aren’t you a vision today, Fabbri, I need to borrow your stylist, is it this guy who lives in the garbage can at the end of the street?_

Hopeless.

Ermal thinks he’s being too obvious with his affection and hides it under layers and layers of harsh words, disguised as jokes. Fabrizio seems to understand this at times. At times he thinks he’s just deluding himself.

xxx

Ermal has to remind himself to keep distance. Sometimes it’s all too easy to give in, to smile back with all the warmth of affection he’s hiding in his heart, sometimes control slides away and he finds himself on the edge of a confession he shouldn’t make.

Fabrizio confesses all the time. To the world, to the journalists, to their friends – words fly out of his mouth free, without any second thoughts, as he tells them all that Ermal’s his light, his close friend, the one he trusts and the one he wants to share everything with. So easy that they both know those words don’t mean anything.

Except right _now,_ the moment he says them, he believes in every single syllable.

It doesn’t mean he’ll still remember them in a month. It doesn’t mean he’ll call him in the evening to wish him goodnight.

Ermal wishes he’d just stop talking. He shuts him up with kisses whenever he can, whenever they are alone, but unfortunately, he cannot do it in public.

Fabri tells him he’d like to start a band, then to open a bar, and Ermal has to live through this with a pained smile on his face, feeling slightly hurt, because all those things sound _wonderful_ and he’d agree in a heartbeat to anything Fabri says in this low, affectionate tone, while looking at him like that, dark eyes softening. He’d agree if he knew all those dreams were serious, not another castle in the air, crushing to dust as soon as Fabrizio’s gaze shifts elsewhere. Or to else _one_.

He declines all the time, sometimes with a joke and sometimes firmly, and if there’s a hint of hurt in Fabri’s eyes, too, it’s not his fault, surely. 

ххх

Ermal often thinks in front of the mirror – it helps keeping himself on the ground, reminds him of who he is. Even though a hundred people a day write on Twitter that he’s beautiful, using different languages and different words, not all of them appropriate, at the end of the day he can still look in the mirror and see that he’s just himself. A guy with messy curls, big nose and a crooked smile, lines of his face too sharp, too stark to be actually attractive.

“Who’s the fairest of them all?” asks Fabrizio from behind, laughing, and Ermal almost falls out of his chair – too far in his thoughts, he never noticed the door opening.

“Well, I have far less wrinkles than you do, old man,” he mumbles to conceal his embarrassment.

“Do you now?” Fabrizio feels his uneasiness like predator smells his prey, but doesn’t use this knowledge to hunt him down. He steps close carefully, bends down to put his head on Ermal’s shoulder, look into the mirror with him. “Let me see…” he says slowly and Ermal smiles, because that tone of his voice is reserved for children, that’s the one he uses playing hide-and-seek with them. He stops breathing for a moment and remembers how to only when Fabri’s lips press into his skin, close to the corner of his eye. “There’s one…” he says and then continues with the kisses, looking into the mirror from time to time, just to see Ermal’s amused and skeptical expression slowly give place to something definitely more tender, something he so desperately wishes and fails to suppress.

“Do you want me to count yours now?” he says standing up and leaning slightly back on the table, mischievous smile on his lips, challenge in his voice, and he already knows what the answer will be.

xxx

Those couple of days in Porto between Sanremo and their albums, between warm sheets, not exactly clean anymore, between friends and something entirely different, are the best.

A lot of things happen, most of them nice, like this little memory, and Ermal carefully hides them away, like little birds into tiny boxes, their small hearts beating in different rhythms, creating a single beautiful melody. It’s moments like those which make life worth living, and he needs these boxes to remind himself of it again and again at times when it becomes almost unbearable. To survive, as he himself once put it, not really sure if it was the right word to choose, but Fabrizio’s answering _understanding_ smile made it all worth it.

And it’s all perfect until it’s time to part again and Ermal wakes up from this hazy, wonderful dream and is thrown into the harsh reality, and he suddenly remembers exactly _why_ he initially thought that was a bad idea.

Fabri is still Fabri, the guy who prefers to move on, not bothering with fixing something broken, the guy who runs forward to reach peace and never notices good things along the way. Ermal is so afraid of being left behind, he sees signs everywhere. And this drives him crazy. In every missed call (and there are a lot of them, cause Fabrizio doesn’t answer as a rule and he doesn’t bother himself with calling back), in every late reply or delayed appointment he reads fading interest. He reads indifference.

The worst thing is that it’s not like Fabri’s doing it on purpose, he just doesn’t notice it. If Ermal told him, he’d probably be all soft and apologetic, he’d try to finally start returning his calls every time and not once in a blue moon, he’d notice his not so veiled hints at three a.m. in the morning when he’s restless and longing for some attention, and Fabrizio is blissfully sleeping and not thinking about him at all.

But Ermal never tells him. It’s pointless because that’s just another one of the signs – Fabrizio doesn’t want to feel chained, Fabrizio doesn’t find him _that_ interesting anymore, Fabrizio has other projects, other needs and other people in his life. It’s Ermal who is stuck on him, not the other way round.

He never says anything plainly, but he does joke about it almost one hundred times, hoping against hope that Fabri will understand how serious he is in fact. How much it tires him to always be the one to seek attention, to ask for it bluntly or wait patiently until one of them snaps. Ermal would like to be the one to stop calling at all in vain hope that Fabrizio will start missing him as much, but he’s too afraid that he _won’t._ That it will just be the end of them, whatever ‘them’ is.

It’s painful either way.

He knew it would be. He tried not to get too involved, _he tried_ , but now it feels like he’s falling deeper with each passing day in spite of himself.

xxx

It’s April when their two/six months suddenly come to an end.

Ermal’s irritated by Fabrizio’s constant lack of attention, which forces him to beg for it with gestures, with messages, with hints he doesn’t seem to get. Ermal _hates_ asking for things he’s entitled to _,_ and he’s also irritated by his own inability to protect himself better from exactly this situation.

Fabri doesn’t notice anything, all sunshine and careless joy, suddenly very much interested again, now that Ermal took time to visit Rome for a few days. Now that they can share a bed, laugh together, drink wine and fall asleep, limbs entangled. Fall into a dream again, hoping to never wake up.

It’s easier to be in love like this then to actually make an effort and fucking _call him_ or, god forbid, drive to Milan.

Ermal tries enjoying the moment, but he’s seething inside and he’s genuinely tired of all the games, of Fabri’s loving gazes, which don’t survive separation, of his fucking sincerity, of the way he can make him feel like the most important person in the world only to shift his attention a couple of minutes later. Of the way he wants to cry every time Fabrizio invites him to buy a house in Lisbon.

He reminds himself that it’s all words, just words, and in a year Fabri will be promising the moon from the sky to someone else, as eager and helplessly in love as he is. And he never says ‘yes’.

He yearns for attention, he asks for it, he gets it, he acts like he didn’t need it. He’s caught in a loop without an end and he’s going down, down, slowly, inevitably. It’s exactly like falling only you never notice until it’s too late.

“I think we need to end this,” he says in a firm voice when there’s a day left of his stay in Rome, but he already feels suffocated. And Fabri acts like he doesn’t care, all understanding and giving him _space_. Ermal doesn’t need space, he needs to feel essential, he needs to feel like Fabrizio can’t take another breath without him, just like he himself sometimes. He needs to hear his beautiful words and believe them, not turn them over in his head again and again, looking for a double meaning. He needs a couple of calls a week and an emoji every evening, and that’d be enough for him. It’s not like he asks Fabri to write an album full of love songs for him, although he wouldn’t mind the gesture. Ermal's own lyrics reflect his feelings better than a mirror would, and they already speak only of one ragazzo paradiso.

Ermal’s just so tired of being the only one in love in this relationship.

If it’s even a relationship. He’s never let Fabri clarify it, has he?

“See you later,” Fabrizio says and it’s the second time Ermal sees him hurt, visibly so. It’s like he backs into his shell, so suddenly that you get to notice how his face hardens and becomes unreadable. Impenetrable. It’s when you understand how open and soft he was just a moment before, but there’s no way back now.

Ermal regrets those words immediately.

He doesn’t take them back.

It’s so painful he almost cries on his way back to Milan, the only thing holding him back from complete breakdown being a man in front of him in a train full of people. _It’s okay,_ Ermal thinks, swallowing angry tears. He’s known this will happen all along, so why does he feel disappointed?

His heart doesn’t listen to reason and hurts almost as if it’s being cut from his chest.

His own eyes look back at him from the mirror in their Sanremo room, silently judging. This is what you get when you listen to hope, not reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was inspired by three people - my academic advisor, who made me sad with his opinion on my thesis, Alma, with whom we discussed some of the things written here, and one dead actress, whom i miss. special thanks and warm hugs to my beaver brother, whom i robbed of half an hour of sleep with this ;D  
> the song is by Imagine Dragons, of course.


	2. everything will slide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact - the first version of this was written exactly one year ago

It turns out okay.

They are better as colleagues, or that’s what Ermal tells himself when they meet again, in Lisbon. There should be awkwardness, but they just fall back into their roles _before,_ before that night in Sanremo, which Ermal remembers by bright grey light and his own desperate eyes, reflected in the dark glass. He doesn’t sit in front of the mirrors for too long now, and maybe it’s because he knows no one will step closer to kiss every single patch of his skin, whispering that he’s beautiful.

They are better that way. That way they work – Ermal’s not so bitter about unreturned calls, stops scrutinizing every word Fabrizio says, looking for a double meaning, looking for signs that he’s already tired of him. He can just let go and it feels so good just to laugh together again, to tease Fabri about this and that without a bitter edge to it, to sit with him through the night on the balcony with a bottle of wine and an interesting discussion. To joke without a hundred hidden hints, to be careless again, to smile with honest affection and not be afraid of seeming too clingy, looking too _in love._

Maybe he’s more in love now than he ever was, finally letting himself go, but he never understands it fully. Until.

Until he notices that it’s a pity he’s lost the right to kiss Fabrizio.

Ermal catches himself looking at his full lips again and again, stops his hands from reaching out to caress his face, doesn’t let himself press closer, breathe in his perfume and feel safe again.

It’s dangerous.

He _knows_ it’s not going to work, even if Fabri is still interested in taking him to bed sometimes – and he might be, because Ermal feels his gazes on his skin, perceives his careful touches, bordering on the edge of friendship.

Now he knows _for sure_ that it’s doomed, they tried it, it didn’t work, they are not meant to be, and it doesn’t matter whose fault it is.

Ermal has to remind himself of this a hundred times a day, fighting the impulse to take Fabrizio by the hand and run away together between one interview and another, kiss him behind the corner and forget about all his worries, troubles and sorrows for a couple of blissful hours. To feel complete again. To breathe him in, just for a few minutes and damn all the consequences, damn all his thoughts, looping into a deadlock, damn all his prejudices.

The intensity of this desire is frightening.

A butterfly is born to burn its wings in the fire, a flower blossoms only to wither in a wreath, weaved by someone’s careful, loving fingers, and Ermal feels like he met this beautiful, maddening man only to suffer. It sounds stupid and too dramatic even in his own head, so he keeps this thought close to his heart, choosing not to voice it to anyone.

He knows he cannot have him, soul and heart, completely, utterly, as fully as he is ready to give himself away. He still is unable to stop wanting.

хxx

“You’ll lend me another shirt, right?” Fabrizio asks, his tone timid, and Ermal laughs at this request, trying not to stare too much at his beautifully embarrassed smile.

“Don’t you have your own clothes, Fabbbrizio?” he teases, but it’s light-hearted, and he’s already opening the wardrobe.

“I do, but you don’t like anything I choose myself, and I didn’t bring a team of stylists with me, so…”

“So, you want me to _like_ you,” Ermal jokes, and he’s really grateful that there are no mirrors inside the wardrobe, only clothes, and his shirts and jackets won’t give away his too-pleased smile.

“Of course, I do,” mumbles Fabri, and it sounds too serious for their conversation.

“This will look nice on you,” Ermal quickly shoves the shirt into his hands, trying to fill the dangerous silence.

And he knows it will. It’s hard not to notice how good Fabri looks those days, even with dark circles under his tired eyes, even with anxiety eating him up from inside.

Ermal traces a lazy finger over the pattern of the shirt he’s wearing right now, one of his, too, restrains himself from stepping closer, from telling him to take it off. Allows himself only this brief contact and concentrates on it so much that he doesn’t notice the way Fabrizio’s watching him with pained eyes.

ххх

Ermal’s not surprised that in the end his resistance wears down. It’s Fabri, after all, his kryptonite, his weakest point, his downfall.

They are too drunk to care about anything after the final and all the stress, drunk on both wine and bubbling happiness, which doesn’t fly away at all. They sit close, barricaded in Ermal’s room instead of the noisy party downstairs, where pink glitter is in the air, and Netta repeats her song again and again, and who are they to judge the girl?

The fact is, they both forgot about her just as the key in the lock turned two times, securing them in their own little world. Impenetrable. Safe. Ermal smiles, passing the bottle of red wine to Fabrizio and taking a cigarette from his fingers, not-so-accidentally caressing them. Time moves curiously. It’s slowing down, catching them in its net, air getting heavier and thicker with every breath, every glance.

Memories are funny little things. You can push them down, suppress and suppress, pretend that they don’t exist and nearly believe that they don’t. And they don’t. Until the right time comes, and they _overwhelm_ you with sudden clearness, with their righteous brightness, fly free as birds from the cage you tried to put them in.

Ermal watches Fabrizio with an unfocused gaze, watches him take another gulp and suddenly feels the taste of his skin on the tongue as well as if he’d just licked a strip down his throat. He swallows, avoids this thought carefully and takes the bottle back, trying to eradicate the awakened memory by inhaling another portion of alcohol. Which might not be the best decision in a long run. Wine burns his throat, and when he lowers the bottle, he meets a strangely attentive dark gaze.

Slowly, he passes the bottle.

Slowly, Fabrizio licks the glass bottleneck, never breaking eye contact.

Slowly, he drinks, and a heavy red drop escapes his searching lips, running along the chin, lower, lower, stark on the warm skin. Provocative.

Ermal moves slowly, too, as if in a dream – catches the drop with his open lips somewhere under the throat, licks it off with an open-mouthed kiss, bites the soft skin, waiting for Fabrizio’s broken exhale.

It’s probably time to straighten up and return to the status quo. It’s probably time to stop thinking about all the places he got his mouth back when he was allowed to, when he was invited to. It’s probably too late, because instead he’s already kissing a wet path up, and Fabrizio hisses, almost as if in pain, and pulls him higher by the hair to capture his half-opened mouth. And Ermal yields, submits as easily as always, all rational thoughts flying out of his mind in a heartbeat, his whole body throbbing in an incessant need to get _closer._ He inhales Fabrizio, letting his hands settle on his shoulders, letting his fingers caress those tangled tattoos, letting go so fast his head spins.

It’s exhilarating. It feels like finally coming home.

Their kisses are quick and greedy, their hands impatient, as if they are trying to outrun time.

At some point Fabrizio bites his throat sharply, and Ermal cries out, feeling the pain immediately soothed by tender little kisses.

“We should probably stop,” says Fabrizio right after that, his voice wrecked and too raspy to be decent. It does a number of things to Ermal and he moans, letting each syllable caress his skin, wets his lips to answer something and forgets all the words in the attempt, getting lost in sensations. 

“Probably, yeah,” he manages at last, impatiently opening Fabrizio’s shirt with trembling fingers. A couple more desperate kisses won’t hurt – they are already well behind all the lines set and, frankly, right now he doesn’t care about them at all, cannot remember why he even set them in the first place. The world is narrowed down to the small space on the couch, to Fabrizio’s clouded dark eyes, so close and so familiar, his already kiss-swollen lips, his sharp breaths and gentle hands, almost too gentle for Ermal's tastes. He feels even more drunk with every breath he takes, with each touch and every caress, but as a desperate alcoholic he is, he needs even _more._

And then his wrists get caught by Fabrizio on the second button. Just as he was about to rip it impatiently, it’s _his_ shirt, anyway. He lifts his eyes to Fabri’s face to see what’s wrong, but doesn’t manage to get further then the lips, too damn kissable for him to keep his sanity. Only a firm shake on his captured hands clears the haze a little, and he stops the movement, looking up, into Fabrizio’s eyes. So dark that he shivers from intensity of this gaze, but also so serious.

“Ermal, you are drunk.”

“Am not.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s a pity.”

Ermal ignores the way Fabrizio squeezes his wrists in warning and places a kiss into the curve of his jaw, lightly, gently. God, he missed him _so fucking much,_ and he cannot get close enough to eradicate this abyss between them, this painful gap, something that was once so full of warmth and affection. He wants to just erase those weeks full of melancholy and thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, of too much alcohol and smoking.

Ermal never expected this Fabri-shaped void in his soul to be so agonizingly excruciating.

“Ermal…”

He goes higher, licks the earlobe, then returns to bite into Fabrizio’s lips with a not-so-gentle kiss, making him squeeze the hands on his wrists even harder. Maybe there’ll be bruises tomorrow. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he wants them there.

“Ermal, you’ll regret – “

Oh, that’s a low blow. Ermal is suddenly furious, because he knows, _oh he knows_ he will, as soon as the morning comes, so why does Fabrizio have to remind him? He knows, and he still chooses not to think about it now, because he is dying inside without his warmness, without his closeness, without being able to touch and feel, and kiss every single inch of his body. The emptiness, which is only half-filled, when Fabrizio messes with his hair and puts an arm around him, is hungry and greedy, it yearns, it craves, and it _needs_. It is stronger than he is.

He jumps right into the fire, knowing full well that he will get burnt, skin scorched with guilt and remorse down to the bones. It’s selfish. He cannot resist the pull.

Ermal silences Fabrizio with a kiss, asking him to please, please shut up. To send everything to hell with him and live in a moment, open his heart to sweet euphoria and enjoy. Maybe tomorrow will never come, and they will stay in that little bubble forever, never needing to come up for air. He shifts closer, trying to make Fabrizio lay back, finally get more contact, chest to chest, as close as possible, not a millimeter of space between them. His wrists are still held tight though, and he isn’t in a position to do anything about it.

And then Fabrizio snaps. Like there’s an invisible string in the air, and Ermal just broke it by his insistence, by his absence of words and absence of mind. Like he broke something in Fabrizio. He doesn’t yield, he pushes back instead, and it’s Ermal who ends up on his back, with hands pinned to couch, with thighs opened by a sharp movement of the knee. He thought _he_ was furious a couple of moments ago, when Fabri dared to contradict his intention to stop thinking, but he was wrong. It’s Fabrizio who bites his neck again with barely concealed rage and pushes down, finally eradicating all the space between them, leaving no place to breathe, to think, to speak.

Fabrizio’s raspy _why the fuck are you doing this to me_ gets lost in a desperate mess of two pairs of hands, trying to get rid of clothing between them, and following _why the fuck am I letting you_ remains unpronounced. He’s too busy bruising Ermal with cruel kisses, but Ermal hears those words all the same, loud and clear in the sudden harshness of his touches, feels them with every single cell of his skin. Fabrizio is a gentle lover, always has been, but there are limits even to his patience, and right now he is not in the mood for tender and slow, too angry to be cautious. The brush of his hand, from stomach and lower, quick, dirty, makes Ermal cry out almost as if in pain - too much, too soon, too hard and impersonal, as if Fabrizio decided to end this in two strokes of clever fingers, leaving him devastated, used and probably in tears, like a little boy. Tears that are already about to spill, because Ermal finally feels horribly, horribly guilty, too selfish to think about anything but what _he_ wanted, too weak to be able to deny himself the pleasure, the warmth, the sun, which is Fabrizio Moro.

Self-hatred isn’t new, and it burns like acid, turning every touch into torture. He shouldn’t have started it, oh, he shouldn’t have been thinking all those things, inappropriate, crazy things, which will only bring them both sorrow in the end, _again,_ which will leave them forever broken up and deeply unhappy, even more than before. They barely managed to return to friendship, to smile at each other again, to restore the warmth and the trust, and he ruined it once again.

He should’ve kept his hands to himself. The downward spiral of self-deprecation swallows him whole in a giant chasm, its sharp teeth piercing him in a hundred million places.

“Hey,” as if remembering himself, Fabrizio presses their foreheads together. Sighs. Lets his wrists go to lightly take his face into his hands, pushing the hair away. Seeks his glistening eyes. “I’m sorry, okay?” This tone of voice he usually reserves for children and frightened animals. And Ermal isn’t exactly thrilled to learn that his state prompted Fabri to use it now, but he is still drunk and on the verge of an emotional breakdown, so he only closes his eyes and nods. Fabrizio probably thinks it’s his forcefulness that frightened him, and he cannot be further from the truth. Ermal isn’t a porcelain doll and he can handle a lot more than a couple of bruises – what he cannot handle is emotional distance, the angry silence, the touch without the feeling behind it, the thought of Fabrizio hating him for what he did to him, to _them._ The separation, every fucking degree of it.

Fabri's lips become gentle again, and Ermal’s now free hands come up unsure, caressing his shoulders in a silent apology. Out of the two of them he’s the one who is cruel. He’s the one who refused to talk, decided to end whatever they had and never asked for forgiveness, he’s the one who couldn’t be enough for Fabrizio and had to let him go, and now, now he tries to take him for himself _again._

They trade slow caresses, urgency long gone, leaving only acute feeling of pain, which they try and chase away by new and new touches, unhurried, tender. As if they were an old couple, a pair of lovers, who have all the time in the world. It hurts deep under the skin, under the bones and still deeper, it hurts, and it leaves them both breathless, too close for words, too disconnected for understanding each other without them.

Ermal hates himself for doing it to them, but moans quietly from pleasure, feeling more naked then all the times they did it before. Bizio didn’t see through his soul back then, never knew how much he actually mattered, but now he can guess from his desperation, can read it in his eyes, unguarded, defenseless, and it’s even more terrifying than just intimacy. Too raw and too open, too much, and at the same time so little. He doesn’t let the tears spill, but Fabri still kisses them off his skin.

Ermal doesn’t know what Fabrizio thinks. Doesn’t know why he’s doing this, even though he should’ve left, should’ve refused, should've done anything else except for what he did. It will drive them apart even more, will hurt them both, will ruin the fragile friendship they managed to build on the ruins of a failed relationship _,_ and he should’ve, _should’ve_ made more effort to prevent it.

Ermal doesn’t know that with anyone else he would’ve.

Fabrizio isn’t as gentle as usual, but he still is himself, so there are no more bruises, no more cold detachment. He cannot be cruel to him even when he really, really wants to, when he would very much like to show Ermal the consequences of his whims, to show him _exactly_ how much pain he inflicts by acting the way he is. But he cannot. All he can do is forgive him with every careful touch, with every gentle push, with every silent whisper from his lips, with words that never leave his mouth, with words Ermal doesn’t hear.

Ermal’s too busy shuddering from pleasure under Fabrizio, greedily swallowing every single stroke of his attentive fingers, absorbing it with his whole body, storing it for later – maybe for forever, if it is the last time. And it is, isn’t it? Another try will be too painful to bear for both of them. They would never dare.

So, Ermal’s is capturing the moment with all the fibers of his being. Fabrizio’s hazy eyes, his lips, wet and half-opened, broken by a careless bite, his strong hands, holding Ermal in place, his fingers, plastered to his skin, grounding him, not letting him get away. His movements, sure and through, tearing suppressed moans from Ermal's mouth again and again, making him bite his own lips in a sweet, sweet agony and tug on his wonderful, artfully tousled hair. Fabrizio is losing himself slowly, too, giving in and letting go, and it’s a beautiful sight to watch, if only Ermal could concentrate enough to burn the image into his memory, but he is too far gone for that. He clenches his thighs almost convulsively, finally letting go of the heart-wrenching guilt for a couple thousand of long moments, long enough to be worth of all the pain, tears and bruises, long enough to forgive and be forgiven, to unite in a single movement, clenching teeth and still not being able to contain last broken moans, silenced by kisses as quickly as they both can, closer, finally close enough.

Fabrizio whispers his name into his lips again and again, more vulnerable than Ermal’s ever seen him. Ermal holds him closer and kisses his tortured broken mouth, apologizing again and again.

How will they ever be able to go back from this?

They are both too wrought out and too tired to even move after that.

Ermal pushes his nose into Fabrizio’s neck, inhaling him, closes his eyes, still hurting from all the tears he didn’t spill, and just breathes, savoring the moment. Everything is wrong, everything hurts, but for a couple of seconds he doesn’t think about it and he can smile.

xxx

Ermal doesn’t know how Fabri manages to get up first, he feels like he just closed his eyes for a moment, and then woke up alone with a throbbing pain everywhere in his body. He manages a raspy _fuuuck_ and tries to find his phone, but fingers only catch glass sides of empty wine bottles (how many are there?) and a piece of paper. Not exactly conscious yet, he lifts the paper closer to his eyes, spending a minute on trying to collect letters into words and force them to make some sense.

“Please, don’t hate me,” simply says the paper in a familiar writing.

Ermal closes his eyes, pushes them into his skull with his palms and wishes to cease to exist. To just disappear, right now, right there, so he won’t have to deal with last night and with his useless life. Not to feel. Not to think.

What has he done? He has taken a beautiful relationship, a great friendship, an inspiring brotherhood and twisted it into something ugly and painful, something sad and dirty.

He doesn’t get up until afternoon, staring into the ceiling and exercising in self-hatred. Then a message reminds him that he has an interview today, and the only thing he wants less then to give it, is explaining why he can’t.

His face in the mirror reminds him of a depressed addict after a week without a dose. His eyes are red, his throat is covered with purple, right wrist is showing a slight brownish bracelet of bruises. There are traces of fingers imprinted in yellow on his shoulders.

He covers the bruises with concealer, wincing a little, he uses eye drops to clear away the redness, wears a thick scarf and a long-sleeved shirt, nervously pulling down the cuffs. The last thing he wants is to spread a rumor that someone is abusing him – that would be more sad than funny. The face in the mirror is still the same, but at least now he doesn’t look like a victim and can confront the world. Has to.

He pushes the tips of his fingers into the scarf, over the bruises, making them hurt with dull pain, repeated in his heart. He deserved those and more, and it’s so, so wrong of him to cherish those little signs of Fabri’s affection, it’s against everything he preaches for, against _love is not violence._ But his love is. He made it violent the moment he got terrified, the moment he looked in the mirror in Sanremo and saw a man, who isn't worth changing for. He knew it and he still fell into the trap, mind and body, gave in to his need to be loved, even for a short while – first in February, and last night again.

He touches the paper, caresses blue letters with his fingertips. He doesn’t know what Fabri thought about when he wrote this, he cannot read his mind, but what if he is spiraling into the same void of self-destruction, blaming himself for some unfathomable reason? Ermal sighs. He is a cowardly man, so he doesn’t call and just writes a message, a couple of words and a weak smile with a single bracket.

“Never. Only myself.”

xxx

They meet in a room full of people, and they don’t have time to remember how to communicate, don’t have time to learn to behave again, to maneuver around each other so that no one will ever know. And maybe it’s for the best, because even though Fabri’s smile is forced, his eyes are full of hope when he goes for a hug, and Ermal doesn’t evade, stroking his back and relaxing in his warm embrace.

Today has been hell. He’s been thinking and thinking, could barely concentrate on the questions and had to honestly tell the interviewer that he slept badly, earning a sympathetic smile and an army of people on Twitter begging him to sleep more with tearful hashtags and funny pictures. Oh, if only they knew.

He’s been driving himself crazy with thinking, but now Fabrizio is by his side, warm and real, still there, even after Ermal broke all there was between them just by being himself, and his presence is calming. Reassuring. Ermal takes his hand, intertwining their fingers, and feels relieved for the first time since yesterday, when Fabri answers him with a not-so-strained smile and kisses his cheek, gentle. It’s like that day in Sanremo, when Ermal hugged him on the stage, only the positions are reversed now and it's him who desperately needs protection. From his thoughts. From his desires. From Fabrizio himself. 

The embrace is almost surreal in its tenderness, careful fingers combing through his untidy hair, fixing the slipping scarf on his neck, and Ermal almost blushes as Fabri’s hand grazes the marks under it, marring his skin, still sore. His eyes are unreadable, but there’s sorrow somewhere deep below the surface, reflecting in his slow movements and fingers, slightly trembling. Ermal catches them in his own and smiles, silently telling him not to worry.

Maybe they are not broken yet. Maybe they can, after all, put all of this behind them and still be friends. Ermal closes his eyes, tightens a hand in his and promises to never, ever again let himself want more than he can and should have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> never thought writing a multichapter is so nerve-wracking  
> thanks to everyone for leaving comments, i really appreciate it ❤


	3. love will never die

Ermal doesn’t keep this promise.

Eurovision is over, and he couldn’t care less about its results now, but his and Fabrizio’s story is not finished. It’s in the air between them, it’s suspended, it grows heavier and heavier from meeting to meeting, from glance to glance, cautious, yearning, dreamy.

It eats them out from inside gradually as they slowly fall into the old patterns, as if guided by an invisible hand, as if unable to resist that pull, brutally dragging them from their own orbits into a new one. As if there never was Ermal’s harsh and brisk _we should end this_ between them, as if it’s okay to just kiss each other again when no one is looking and sleep together whenever they have a chance.

Words are not their forte, but they don’t need words for this, only gestures, simple as one, two, three, four. A touch of fingers, light as feather – _hey, how are you tonight_. A smile full of concealed joy, cheeks dimpling with carefully restrained affection – _great, now that you’re there_. A glance around, to see if they are alone, lost in the grey twilight somewhere in the backstage, other people drawn away by the odor of Fabri’s hideous Marlboro. A glance to confirm that no one’s looking and then a quick kiss, turning into another one – _would you like to continue in my room_? A sweet caress of fingers, hidden by a sharp bite into half-opened lips – _I thought you’d never ask_.

It’s a simple routine to get used to, and they do very soon, carving moments away from colleagues, crowds and journalists, seeking closeness, but never too much of it. Too much is too painful, that they had learned well, although Ermal sometimes still catches himself on wishful dreams and dangerous thoughts, sometimes glimpses his own eyes in the mirrors, misted over with longing.

But it’s pointless. The first time they balanced on an unclear line between relationship and friendship, danced on the edge, not quite daring to cross it, but still acknowledging its frightening existence. This time it’s very clear to both that there’s only sex.

Ermal never calls Fabri those days and they barely even talk, preferring non-verbal communications.

A fake indifference in the way Fabri lies across the bed, his hand slightly extended towards Ermal – _will you stay till morning?_

A sound of the door closing, too loud in an empty room, full of darkness – _no_.

xxx

It’s in one of those early June summer festivals, which they both are obliged to cope with, when Ermal suddenly notices that Fabrizio is tired, visibly so. His eyes are still as dark and warm as before, when they met behind the stage, giving in to the need for some contact, but they are also a bit desperate and too sad for his liking. He closes them with gentle kisses, putting all the love he cannot voice into those small gestures.

“You should sleep,” he whispers, quiet in an eerily silent room, quiet, so that the moon outside wouldn’t hear him and judge him.

“No,” Fabrizio smiles and his tired smile is as beautiful as usual. “I shouldn’t, I’m not really tired, I’m just – “

His words are interrupted with a yawn and Ermal laughs, caressing his cheek. They are on the couch, close, an opened bottle of wine in front of them, a nice bed behind them. He’s kind of bitter they won’t get a chance to use it, but he cannot miss the way Fabri struggles to keep his eyes open and it seems he hasn’t been sleeping well in a while, whatever is keeping him up at night. Ermal very much hopes it’s _what_ ever, not _who_ ever, but he’d never dare to ask.

“You are,” he says softly, allowing his voice to sound fond. “And you should. And I should go.”

“What about a goodnight kiss, then?” asks Fabri, playful, and Ermal chooses to indulge them both, leaning in, making this one kiss sweeter, than all the kisses he’s given him since Lisbon. It’s simple, slow and almost chaste, but they both don’t seem to be able to stop.

Ermal remembers himself first, but Fabrizio doesn’t let him go easily, dragging him into the bed, where he lies down with a content sigh and a sleepy smile.

“Why don’t you stay with me?” he asks, his face almost buried in the pillow, when Ermal steps back in the direction of the door.

Fabri doesn’t like asking for things, too. But he still asked.

Seconds tick by as Ermal swallows and tries to collect his thoughts, tries to and fails desperately, because it’s too abrupt, they don’t ask each other for things anymore, not unless it’s _please harder_. He stiffens and opens his mouth, already looking for an excuse, because agreeing would be a mistake, surely, but he still cannot get himself to utter a word, until Fabri adds carelessly.

“Just for a couple of hours, I’ll rest and then we can do… whatever.”

His tone of voice makes Ermal lick his lips, suddenly giving him a legitimate reason to sleep in the same bed. Something they’ve never done since his _we have to end this_. Something he misses desperately, but never lets on, never tells anyone how much he loved the way Fabrizio’s skin felt hot on his, the way his hand always ended up somewhere on his chest, or torso, or even lower. The way Fabri made him feel like he belonged in this place under his arm.

Foolish thoughts.

“Okay,” Ermal hears himself say and never notices Fabri’s beautiful smile full of hope, swallowed by the pillow.

xxx

It’s all bullshit and Ermal understands it only a couple of hours later, lying awake, unable to fall asleep next to Fabri, so soft and so innocent, lost in his dreams. His face is always beautiful, never failing to attract appreciating looks, but in those quiet moments, when the world seems to stop breathing, it is graced with some kind of special, secret beauty, reserved only for Ermal’s eyes, softened by affection blooming in his chest, almost suffocating him. It’s hard not to start writing a song, inspired by the tired lines of his mouth, the sad trembling of his eyelashes, the tragic fragility, becoming so apparent at those dark hours just before dawn.

Ermal allows himself to watch, since no one will ever know, to dwell on all the times he’d lay exactly like that in spring, sad thoughts on his restless mind, always sad and longing, and Fabri sometimes drew him closer, as if sensing his distress through his dreams. Ermal watches and tries to stifle a stupid desire to move closer himself, to put his head on a warm shoulder and crawl under the motionless arm.

It’s bullshit. Fabrizio snores softly, it’s almost dawn and it becomes very clear that he never intended to wake up in a couple of hours. Ermal shouldn’t have listened, what was he even thinking?

He doesn’t have the heart to wake Fabri up, and the only thing left is to fall asleep now, lulled by a beautiful melody of his breathing, but if they sleep together without sex it’s a whole another story. He can’t cope with this, can’t stand the fear, arising in his chest like a snake, ready to strike, can’t stand the panicked beating of his heart, desperate and fruitless, a small bird in chains.

He has to run.

xxx

He runs in slow motion, though. He gets up from the bed silently, looks for his boots everywhere, then looks for his phone, which is hiding under the pillow, and only after all those useless motions he finally crosses the room, almost reaching the door in a couple of indecisive steps.

“Don’t do this. Not again,” says Fabrizio, his tone so tired, that Ermal feels deeply sorry for a moment. It’s morning, and it’s grey again, exactly like all those months ago in Sanremo. Only it’s June now and they are still somewhere in an uncertain limbo between friends with benefits and actual friends, and Ermal’s just waiting for another shoe to drop.

He drops his own shoes quite literally, hears them fall down with a muffled noise.

“I’m sorry,” he only says, picking them up again. “I’m sorry, Fabri, I need to – “

“No, you don’t,” it’s dark and he can’t see Fabrizio’s face, can’t see the way he frowns and rubs his eyes with his fingers, but he still sees it. “You’re just… thinking again, whatever you’re thinking, I can’t guess that, Ermal, I can’t if you don’t tell me… and please… would you just tell me?”

Ermal sighs heavily. He doesn’t have anything to tell except that he feels strange all the time, unable to completely erase all the affection he feels from his heart, unable to stop wanting to express it fully, without reserve. But he cannot, cannot destroy the precautious balance they built over the weeks since Lisbon, cannot risk the equilibrium that makes him almost content.

Almost is such a painful word.

He doesn’t know what they are now. Even less than whatever they were in spring, probably.

He doesn’t know how Fabri has been able to forgive him for all this mess and why is he trying to understand. Why now. Shouldn’t he just move on, as he once told him he does, leaving all the good and bad things behind and opening himself up for new, untainted experiences? There’s nothing untainted left about them, that’s for sure. 

“I don’t think I can, Bizio,” he answers as honest as he can. “I’ll text you in the evening – we have another charity thing next week, maybe we can – “

“No,” sounds so heavy, it drops to the floor almost as audible as boots before, but much more frightening. “I’m tired of this, Ermal, truly. You don’t talk to me, you don’t confide in me, you obviously don’t trust me… I can’t do it like that.”

Here it comes.

Ermal doesn’t need to hide the way his face crumbles, because it’s dark. He only has to control his breathing. One, two, three, slowly. Fabrizio doesn’t need to see him destroyed.

“You mean too much to me,” is what Fabri says next, and it’s not what Ermal expected to hear, and it sounds more defeated than anything else. “But if you walk out and close this door right now… I won’t bother you ever again. I don’t want this – “ he probably gestures with his hand, that Ermal can imagine too well, he knows all his particularities, his little mannerisms. “Whatever that is between us, to continue.”

The door is half-open, one ray of warm light from the corridor cutting their room in two, a visible border between future and past.

Ermal closes it. In front of him, not behind, his hand shaking almost visibly.

“… _ermal?”_ is almost a whisper, because Fabrizio still cannot see if he walked out or stayed. Ermal waits for a couple of heartbeats, unsure if he should have.

“I’m here,” he says, finally, takes a few steps back to sit on the bed and hide his face in his hands. Pass fingers through his curls, tugging on them painfully. He’s such a fool. “I guess I just can’t lose you.”

It sounds so final when he says it out loud, but didn’t he know it from the very beginning? Didn’t he know when he kissed Fabrizio in Sanremo, that one day he’ll find himself like this, destroyed and alone, utterly belonging to someone who will never be able to give him the same?

It was bad with Silvia, but now it’s even worse. Maybe because it’s shorter, brighter, and both happiness and pain seem more intense, cut deeper, tearing his insides.

He didn’t say much, but he still feels bare under Fabri’s gaze, confessing this secret. It’s like saying _I love you, but you don’t have to love me back, I still won’t be able to stop_ , only this time he’s entirely, tragically serious.

“Why would you say that,” whispers Fabrizio, finally sitting up to hug him from behind, kissing him somewhere in the curls. “I told you. If you stay, I stay. That’s the deal, understand?”

“Well, you say a lot of things,” says Ermal and almost winces from the way his own voice sounds bitter.

“And you don’t say anything. It seems like a bad balance,” Fabri answers with a tired laugh. “I don’t know what you want from me, Ermal. It’s like you’ve decided everything already in that head of yours,” he ruffles his curls, still affectionate. “Staged all of our conversations, making up my replies… As if you know me so well. As if I gave you the right to decide everything for me. I get it, you like to control everything, you don’t trust other people to guide you, but there were times when you let yourself go with me, and I thought that maybe… maybe if I just wait and be patient, you’d let me in. You’d allow me to say things, you’d listen.” Fabrizio shifts on the bed behind him, makes Ermal turn, so that they finally see each other’s faces in the dark, and Ermal wants to shout at him that he’s wrong, cannot he see how easily he follows him, even right now, but deep down those words hit the target. Allowing Fabrizio to do everything and anything to his body is easy, it feels great, but allowing him inside his soul… that’s another thing. “But it’s June, Ermal, it’s June, and I still don’t understand where I stand with you. You joke and you smile, you kiss me and hug me, and then you run away in the morning and never let me say anything… as if you are afraid of _what_ I am going to say. So tell me… tell me, what it is. Tell me if you see me as your fuckbuddy,” he says that softly, using the pause to lift Ermal’s chin with a fingertip, make him look into his eyes. And Ermal sees the distant pain in them, mirroring his own, as if for the first time. And for the first time it downs on him exactly how deep he might have hurt Fabrizio, while desperately trying not to get hurt himself. “If we are friends with benefits…” continues Fabri, his tone biting, his grip turning a bit harsher, “or are we even friends?”

The question hangs in the air.

Are they friends? Are they brothers, who put to shame Lannister twins from Fabri’s favorite show?

“I guess it depends on the perspective,” finally says Ermal, and it’s almost a whisper. “It seems I can’t be your friend and keep my hands to myself. We tried that.”

“Oh, how flattering to know that my skills in bed – “ starts Fabri, irritated, tries to back away, but Ermal interrupts him with a kiss. Small, chaste, meant to keep him silent.

“If I wanted skills, I’d hire someone, we did make some money together, I can afford it.”

“Now that was hurtful,” Fabrizio mutters, but smiles, anyway.

Ermal sighs, hides his face, lowers his eyes again – he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to even begin to unravel the tangle in his chest that is his feelings, too many of them, too contradicting and strong, hurting him from the inside with the thorns they’ve grown since February. It’s his silence that makes them grow poisonous and sharp, but isn’t it better to be hurt from the inside than let Fabri hurt him?

Maybe it isn’t.

“It’s… complicated,” he says, almost desperate, after a while. “I don’t even know where to start, I feel like I’m losing ground whenever I think about what we are… what we used to be and what we – “ he wants to say _will be_ , but future is still too uncertain. What will they be when summer ends with its festivals, warm starry nights and comfortable hotel beds? What will they be when they return to Milan and Rome, when autumn comes, a harsh reminder of endings and closing circles?

“It’s not complicated, Ermal,” Fabrizio interrupts him. “I’m not asking you to explain the sense of the world, although I get the feeling you’d better do that instead of answering a simple question… do you want me? As a friend? As a colleague? As a lover?”

Of course, Fabrizio would turn this question into something so simple it’d require a yes or no answer, but Ermal’s mind doesn’t work like this, it trips itself over endless possibilities, complex conditions, dark doubts and darker fears.

“I can’t – “ he starts and falls silent again, when Fabri sighs.

“Tell me something else then. Anything.”

 _Say something, I’m giving up on you_ supplies Ermal’s mind unhelpfully and he almost smiles, but it’s not the time for music now. It would be so much easier to just sing his heart out, but he’s already done it a couple hundred times and Fabrizio never gets it, never understands his clever hints and enigmatic smiles.

That might be because they are always a bit _too_ enigmatic. He never actually wanted him to get them, to get _him_ , too afraid of being sincere for once, of showing who he really is.

Never before.

“I don’t deserve your patience,” he chooses to say and uses the pause to kiss Fabrizio once more, slowly, sweetly.

“You’re using the kisses to give yourself time not to answer,” lets out Fabri with a laugh right into his lips, his breath warm, its rhythm comforting. “Don’t think I don’t get it.”

“So perceptive,” mocks Ermal and ends up on his back for this, but it’s not like he’s complaining. It’s nice to feel the warm weight on him again and not in a sexual context, it’s nice to see Fabri’s playful smile and his eyes full of mischief. It’s nice and it’s well beyond the line he’s drawn for them both.

“More perceptive than you think,” he whispers. “I gave you time, I gave you space, I let you dictate the pace, because clearly for you it’s not easy. I followed your directions and look where we are now.”

Ermal bites back his _you shouldn’t have_ and tries to squirm out of the embrace, more out of spite than anything else, and feels a secret thrill down his spine, when Fabri doesn’t let him go.

“Answer me,” he says firmly and Ermal loves that tone of his voice, especially in bed, but right now he still doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t want to answer. “Or is it that you are afraid to hurt me?”

The bitter note is new.

“More like afraid _you_ could hurt me,” leaves his lips almost involuntary, and Fabri frowns, so now he has to explain, to tell him everything, every single doubt and fear until he is laid completely bare before him, naked without his masks, until he has nothing to hide behind.

Honesty cuts deeper than light, filtering through shut curtains in thin, sharp rays.

Ermal closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to look at it, not again, and speaks. About the way things fall apart with time and people do, too, about this fear of being left behind, alone on the dark road. About the birds, flying free, but carrying their cages in their hearts. About the fact that they are clearly not the soulmates so many reporters once claimed them to be, because somewhere along the way, most likely in their shared bed in Sanremo, they stopped talking and never started again. Which is his fault, clearly.

“It’s not your fault,” Fabri says, tracing his mouth with a fingertip, shutting him up for a couple of long minutes, interrupting this embarrassing stream of unconscious metaphorical nonsense. “I shouldn’t have left it up to you.”

“I thought you just didn’t care,” whispers Ermal, looking at the patches of sunshine on the floor, at Fabrizio’s hair, ruffled from sleep, at the mirror on the other end of the room, reflecting a hazy, distorted version of them, at anything except the face in front of him. He still sees it, though. A bit tired, a bit sad, a bit unsure, totally lost – just like his own. “You never called me, you never took time to go to Milan, you never told to me anything and how was I supposed to know, that it was all because you decided to let me choose the direction of this relationship? How could I guess – “

“Oh, so it was a relationship, nice to finally know,” Fabrizio mumbles with a sour smile.

They fall silent then, neither knowing what to say. And Ermal doesn’t want to argue, but the words are at the tip of his tongue, finally, and he cannot swallow them back again, let them rot inside and poison his thoughts once more. They already bubble in his mouth, breaking free without permission.

“It wouldn’t have killed you to call me back a couple of times, though,” he states flatly after a while and almost bites his tongue at the look Fabri gives him.

“I would if you wanted me to.”

“Are you joking?” asks Ermal, incredulously. “Of course, I wanted you to, it was embarrassing how much I wanted, I texted you at three a.m. in the morning only to wish you good luck for the interview next day, because I knew your commitments better than my own.”

Fabrizio falls down on the pillow beside him with one more sigh, tired of resting on his elbows. He looks into the ceiling when he speaks.

“I guess when you put it like that… but Ermal, you always acted so… distant. As if you were trying to keep me away. As if you didn’t really want anything but sex and were just afraid to tell me. As if I was bothering you with my words. So, I just… stopped.”

“I was trying not to fall in love with you,” mumbles Ermal, forgetting himself for a second, and hears Fabri’s nearly hysterical laugh.

“That would be too bad, yes.”

It’s fun looking for faults in Fabrizio, Ermal used to do it all the time. He judged him for so many things just to keep himself from falling completely, and now there’s only one question left – would that have been so bad?

But it would.

Ermal remembers how much it hurt the day Silvia left, and the next day, and the day after that – a string of lightless hours, a misery that seemed endless. That love didn’t leave any visible scars, but scars of the other kind are still there, whispering in his ears.

“Well, yes, it would – you’d move on and leave me behind with a broken heart full of sad songs, all about you.”

Fabrizio turns slowly on his side, his eyes so piercing that Ermal shivers from the intensity, wants to get up, to run away, to close that door behind him and never feel that naked before another person again. But he cannot. He already tried this, and he cannot, as if there are, always were those invisible ties between them, binding their hearts, their hands, their breaths together. Unbreakable, inevitable.

“Have you ever considered that I wouldn’t want to move on?” Fabri asks even quieter than before, his voice almost lost in the chirping of the early birds outside, but Ermal doesn’t hear them, doesn’t see anything except those dark eyes, looking deep into his soul. He smiles bitterly.

“I haven’t, Fabbri. I know I can’t keep you.”

Fabrizio doesn’t say anything after that, not for a while, and Ermal feels almost at peace now, moving closer, burying his face in his shoulder. Everything is said, finally. There’s nothing left to fear, nothing left to conceal, and he can just mourn for this sad love story with a sloppy ending, scripted by some wannabe producer who doesn’t know how to finish a storyline, and then try to move on without giving his friends headaches about his nervous breakdowns, like last time.

“What if we try again,” Fabri asks finally, when the sun outside is already high, and grey light changes to almost orange, warm and cheerful. “Like in February. Only I’ll call you as often as you want, I’ll go to Milan and you’ll stop acting like my every touch bothers you and stop making those horrible fake smiles whenever I say something nice to you.”

Ermal almost laughs at this curt and accurate summary of their failed relationship.

And he very well knows that it’s still doomed, that it still will be intense and short-lived and will break his heart for good.

But it might also be the best thing in his life. And this time around he doesn’t need to protect his heart, he’s already given it away, unwillingly, but irreversibly.

“Okay,” he says almost indifferently, and it falls from his lips so easy, it’s horrifying.

It doesn’t feel like a step forward, a new chapter opening or anything that grand, more like a continuation of his slow and inevitable slide down the slope. It wouldn’t be much different from what they already have, right?

“Right,” mumbles Fabrizio, and he sounds like he’s trying not to scare him off.

And Ermal feels like he doesn’t understand anything about him anymore. The impression he had of Fabri in his mind crumbled a couple of minutes ago, when he didn’t act according to the prepared script, when instead of sleeping through his escape he didn’t let him go. Squeezed his hand tight, patience of a saint finally coming to an end. Ermal always feared this moment, but never thought it might lead to this, to a tentative peace, uncertain and nerve-wrecking, but still… something.

xxx

Ermal manages to fall asleep for a couple of hours, but then he wakes up again because of the hand, gently threading through his curls. So tender, he wants to cry.

“I love you,” Fabrizio says softly, absently, never stopping his fingers. Like it’s nothing important, just a reminder.

“I’m not sleeping,” Ermal mumbles, not really managing to stifle down his smile and the sudden surge of happiness in his chest. His fear is not yet awake, lulled to sleep but Fabri’s caresses, and Ermal takes his time enjoying the blissful moment. “Just because my eyes are closed doesn’t mean I won’t hear you.”

“Oh, I know you’re not sleeping,” Fabrizio’s laugh is like sunshine on his skin, warm and happy. He missed that sound so badly.

“Then why did you – “

“So that you could pretend if you didn’t want me to say it.”

Maybe he is dreaming, after all.

xxx

“Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed you in February,” says Ermal, pensive, when it’s already evening, and they are still in this room, although both had to cancel a couple of appointments for tomorrow, and Ermal feels a thrill down his spine because Fabri did this for him, and he didn’t even have to ask.

Maybe they are finally learning to understand each other without words. Maybe it’s about time.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have,” agrees Fabrizio easily and Ermal looks at him, curious if he wants to know why. He leans a bit closer, resting on his shoulder, takes another drag from Fabri’s cigarette, pulling it out of his fingers, and waits for him to finish the thought, forgetting to feel anxious about anything he might say. “Maybe our first kiss would be in Lisbon then, or here, or in the autumn, and we’d trust each other a bit more. And we won’t let each other… fly apart.”

Ermal kisses him for that. He didn’t let himself trust Fabrizio, but this trust has grown on him without permission, escaped his control treacherously and now weighs on his shoulders heavily.

It’s a reassuring weight.

xxx

Days go by.

Ermal feels almost serene, at peace with his feelings and thoughts for once. He can finally say all those small things he has kept inside for so long. Can tease Fabrizio mercilessly about his shirt with a mischievous smile – _is it your grandfather’s or just incredibly fashionable?_ \- and then just tell him that even in this atrocious piece of clothing he still is beautiful as the sun, and see his eyes shine as he hides his reddening face in a hug.

He can drive to Rome at midnight if he is unable to sleep and take his place under Fabrizio’s arm closer to morning without him even waking up.

He can sing him a new song, quietly, while the sky grows darker and there’s less and less wine left in the cupboard.

He can laugh into kisses, never bothering to conceal his joy.

It’s as scary as it is liberating, but it happens slowly, step by careful step, reassurance on reassurance, and not only with words – Fabrizio did learn that he doesn’t believe them much – but with gestures and changes. They both change, in the end, trying to fit in better, trying to become each other’s perfect puzzle piece.

It happens slowly, and it blooms finally, beautifully, as soon as Ermal stops counting days and Fabrizio starts using handcuffs. Metaphorically. Or maybe not only.

xxx

Ermal doesn’t need to try his best to keep the distance, doesn’t want to anymore – life does that for him anyway. They still live it different cities, still have careers, commitments and families, but autumn has already ended and he’s still the light. It makes him smile at night, caressing the smooth screen of his phone with a fingertip right where Fabrizio’s tired face is, when he says Ermal can finally listen to his future album. Smiling as if there’s something _for him_ in there and Ermal can’t wait, feeling like a child a day before his birthday, because it’s one more proof of something real, tangible between them and he cherishes those proofs more than anything.

There’s a flutter in his chest and he recognizes it as a new melody trying to get out, one more love song. He should be bored of those by now, but no, every time Fabrizio finds a new way to inspire him just by being himself. And by staying with him, proving all his fears and prejudices wrong, proving, that it’s in his nature to surprise endlessly and find his own way to stay true to himself. Ermal knows now that he’ll never fully understand the enigma that is his Bizio, seemingly simple and yet so unpredictable, but he doesn’t want to anymore. Doesn’t want to put him into a neat box with a label and know for a fact what will his next step be – he wants to be the one watching him with interest and excitement, never expecting the next move, but always trusting it not to hurt him.

It’s a strange feeling to wrap his head around, but it arrives so unhurriedly that Ermal just accepts it.  And Fabri doesn’t disappoint him, through months keeping the same expression of affection he had in his eyes when he first uttered his feelings out loud on a dreamy summer morning. Ermal didn’t believe him then, not fully, but he’s heard those words enough since, and with every repetition they get a little closer to the target, a little easier to rely on. One by one they put his fear of being left to sleep, make it simpler to free his love, let it be without trying to stifle it or keeping it caged.

It’s hard to get tired of a person whom you see once or twice a week at best, and some small and insecure part of Ermal still thinks that is why Fabrizio’s feelings burn as bright as they did last year.

But it’s a distant thought now. It doesn’t prey on his dreams and his thoughts. Maybe because it’s a year and Bizio has already somehow poisoned him with something as dangerous as hope between one call and another, between a hundred texts and stupid emojis he doesn’t even know how to use, but still tries for his sake. And it’s endearing to receive a random emoji from him once in a while, which he sends just to say _hey, I’m thinking of you_. And Ermal is still the one to call first and drive to Rome more often, still the one angry about missed calls, but it never hurts as much if he’s got all those small signs of affection to rely on, and if Fabri apologizes every time with his talented mouth for his inability to hear the ringtone.

Also, it’s kind of nice to be able to just say _god, Bizio, if you miss one more call I’ll kill you and don’t hope that my love will save you from a slow, horrible death_.

Everything is temporary, but Ermal knows that whatever that thing binding them is (love is a bit too banal word for his tastes), it’s growing stronger with each day, taking more and more place in his heart, under his skin, slowly, but surely inching inside his veins, mixing into his breath and his every thought, mirroring those of Fabrizio. Stronger than marriage vows, deeper than soul.

And that’s something he never even dared to dream of.

xxx

Pink light of dawn outside changes to warm yellow as Ermal packs his clothes into seven bags to move to another city, that has been waiting patiently for him all those months. That now is welcoming him with a bright sun up in the sky and another one, inked into the hand, tightening his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo that's a wrap ;D  
> i only recently i finally got inspiration from the words of a shady queen, thanks for that, darling
> 
> i'm eternally grateful to everyone who wrote me something, anything about this fic, in the comments or otherwise. it was really important to me, believe me, when i say that. and special thanks to my bro for those 73 messages, i do cherish every single one of them ;D
> 
> see you in a bit, i have other ideas and plans <3  
> //and i hate english punctuation, sorry for the mess with commas

**Author's Note:**

> tell me what you think, any opinion is welcome ;)


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